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My business is to provide people the opportunity to sample the exciting and challenging fishing available at the southern end of Lake Michigan. This page is dedicated to showing a bit of the behind-the-scenes work it takes to do that and to highlight the trips and fun my customers are able to experience.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

STUPID WHITE SPOON

I wish I could remember why I invented the stupid white spoon. I would imagine someone called me on the radio one day and told me they were “killing” the fish on a white spoon with black dots. I must have believed them.

The STUPID WHITE SPOON is a reliable favorite.

I had a supply of magnum white spoon blanks I’d bought from Cabela’s a few years earlier. I’d spray paint them with fluorescent red paint to use as Skamania steelhead lures. The white finish was an undercoating that made the bright red even brighter. So I added a hook to one of the plain white spoons and used a Sharpie to add nine dots to it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained - and I could always paint over the dots.

Most Lake Michigan trolling spoons are bright, shiny, gaudy things. Many of them glow-in-the-dark. The patterns painted on them rival anything Picasso could have envisioned - or Timothy Leery while experimenting with LSD. A white spoon with nine black dots was, well, stupid.

But I tried it and for some reason, the fish liked it.Perhaps it only catches the stupid fish with too few brains to recognize it as a stupid looking spoon. Perhaps it only catches the smartest fish. The one’s with enough brain-power to snub the holographic, mylar crusted, atomic coated lures everyone else is using.

Buoyed by success, I made a couple more (for spares) and handed one to Capt. Doug Iliff to use on his boat one morning. Later, out on the lake the spoon got it’s official name. Doug called me on the radio and told me he’d just caught his biggest fish of the day on that Stupid White Spoon. The name stuck.

Kings, cohos, steelhead - it works for all of them. Lakers love ‘em. So do I. Of course, I’d like any lure that is as reliable as the Stupid White Spoon.